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Just last night I was musing over what appeared to be an entire page of text missing from the "Nanny Diaries", thinking how commonplace it has become to find typos etc, but a whole page! Well, I guess there is something that trumps a missing page! YIKES!!!

Could be worse. There's the notorious anniversary issue of Ms. Magazine that misspelled the word "Feminism" on the cover, in 30 point type.

My favorite type-o, though, is in a rare-book known as "The Naughty Bible." A collector's item, it's just like the King James version of the Bible, only the typesetter inadvertently left out the word "not" in the commandment about adultery.

The sad part of this is that many readers won't even notice the typo. I mean, it's not like we actually have to learn proper English and grammar these days. They aren't rules. They're more like... guidelines.

Many years ago I found that my local library was carrying a book by Isaac Azimov whose spine claimed it to be Through a Glass Clealy, and right in front of me I have a CD by 70s British art rockers 10cc, whose spine claims that it is called The Origunal Soundtrack (great album, as it happens).

My favorite typo came out years ago in a local newspaper advertising an orchestra concert...instead of the Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, the orchestra was slated to play the "Erotica" Symphony. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or just snort coffee through my nose. (I think I did all three.)

I never knew how anal I was about typos in the books I read until I recently read a book that had an average of one per chapter. Two of which included mispelling the name of one of the main characters. Same character, two different misspellings. And most of them were strange typos, such as 'arid' instead of 'and'...as though the typsetter couldnt read the author's hand writing or something. Really pulls you out of the story. Fortunately the book/story itself was very good and I could fall back in...but yeesh.

Busses run advertisements on their sides, and when no advertiser has taken out a spot, the advertisement is for the efficacy of taking out a spot. You've probably seen the like. Well, one of those placeholder advertisement seen riding around on Boulder busses for the past year or so is a simple picture of a fish, a hook, and the words...

Caught 'ya!

I hurt, physically, every time one of those goes by.

(Coincidentally, today's word verification, "oiyyyn", sounds a lot like the sound I make when I see that thrice-damned advertisement.)

One of my (grrrr) favorites is when my 5th grader brings home missives from the school administration loaded with misspellings, misplaced apostrophes, bad plurals, the lot. And these are the folks trying to teach my kid the English language-! They have bachelors', masters', some are even PhDs - pronounced FUDS, folks.

Termagant 2--My dd brings home those kind of notes, usually complaining about her "bad" behavior. I "edit" them in red ink and send them back. :-)

Most of her teachers speak English as a second language, so it's not too surprising to see mistakes. Disheartening, but not surprising.

But it galls me most when her teachers correct her (correct) pronunciation--words like "Topeka," which they insist on pronouncing "Topecka" and "papyrus," which they pronounce with the accent on "pap" and with a short i sound for the y syllable.

Then there are those humbling experiences. On one occasion, I decided to write a short letter to the editor of our local newspaper (a man who also speaks and writes English as a second language) about the constant use of the word "over-speeding" to describe the contributing cause of some fatal car accident. To my surprise, the word "over-speeding" appears in my beloved and trusted dictionary. Sounds redundant to me, but it is apparently a legitimate word.

Headline for full-page newspaper ad for a major department store's Labor Day sale complete with photo of dapper young men wearing crisply starched shirts, Italian ties and dress pants: "All Sh*ts on Sale"